A skillet ratatouille. (screen whooshes)
I have both cored, peeled tomatoes
that we just put in a little boiling water for a minute
till the skins start to slip off,
then we cold shock them, you put it in ice water,
then we let them cool down a little bit, and chop them.
You know what else you can do?
Buy diced tomatoes in a can from the grocery store.
We have the eggplant thinly sliced,
we have zucchini, thinly sliced,
and we have fresh, large tomatoes, thinly sliced.
We're going to make concentric circles of this
on top of a simple sauce we're about to make together.
Okay?
Traditionally in ratatouille, we use red pepper,
but any sweet pepper will do.
And you want about equal parts of pepper to onion.
So we've got a little bit of rosemary,
and a fat spring of thyme.
I'd say once it's chopped, you probably got,
oh, I don't know, a tablespoon of each.
Okay, so we'll sprinkle that in.
We've got a big old cast iron skillet
over a medium heat.
Coat the bottom with EVOO,
about three turns of the pan.
We're going to throw in the peppers and onions first
with the herbs, (vegetables sizzle)
and let those guys start to sweat a bit.
So we're going to salt that and give it a stir.
We're going to put a pesto sauce on top,
so let's work on that while we've got a few minutes here.
We're gonna take the equivalent
of a couple of cups of basil tops,
you can also cut in other herbs, a little bit of parsley,
let's do that.
I have tons from the garden,
prezzemolo, it's called an Italian.
So I made a fat amount of garlic oil,
just some crushed garlic that I infused into,
I don't know, two thirds to one cup of EVOO,
And we're going to use some in our pesto, about half,
and we're going to paint
all of our sliced zucchini, eggplant and tomato
with the rest of it.
So we're dividing it into two camps, okay,
for the same dish.
To the pesto dish
we're going to add about a half cup total of toasted nuts.
These are toasted pine nuts and Sicilian pistachio.
So I'm going to cut and squeeze, cut side up, lemon juice
our fat handful of parmigiano-reggiano,
of course, certo.
And that little other secret ingredient, our chili.
You like things less spicy,
you remove the seeds and the ribs,
that's where the heat lives in chili peppers.
(food processor roars)
I'm turning the sauce off, 'cause it's started to thicken.
This is the diced tomato, fresh or canned,
peppers, onions, garlic, thyme,
and a little bit of rosemary.
Now we're going to go around the pan in concentric circles
with our sliced garden veg.
So, zucchini, tomato,
a little bit of basil here and there,
additional basil leaves, right?
And we just kind of keep going around and around.
The eggplant, remember, I salted,
and let it drain on kitchen towels
while I was making the sauce.
Eggplant.
This might get a little boring and repetitive for you,
maybe they can just film it and speed it up.
(lively music)
Okay guys, into the oven it goes
for about 40 minutes at 400 to 425, okay?
'Til it looks done. (screen whooshes)
There we go.
So underneath is our sauce,
on top are those concentric circles
of everything fresh from the garden.
Now comes the fun part.
We take the pesto that we made,
and we go around and around,
and turn it kind of like into a tie dye.
Pretty cool.
And then we nestle the bread in.
(screen whooshes) (sparkling)